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Don’t worry about Harry Potter Wiccans

Author Contends Harry Potter Fuels Wiccan Growth Among Teens and that Witchcraft ‘Spells Trouble’ for Society – Christian Newswire

“There’s plenty of real occultism embedded in Rowling’s fantasy works,” Wohlberg contends, “and in spite of naïve popular opinion, Pottermania is aiding Wicca’s growth.”

I would agree with this, and would agree that encouraging Wiccanism is not a good thing. But it’s a question of degree.

How many Wiccans is Harry Potter creating v. how many enthusiastic readers is Harry Potter creating?
How many children are being affected by Rowling’s paper-thin, entirely unserious endorsement of witchcraft (does J.K. Rowling really believe that kids should practice the Craft?) v. how many children are being affected by Rowling’s intense, entirely serious message of love, courage and responsibility? (does J.K. Rowling really believe that kids should be loving, courageous, and good?)

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Why to doubt the Deathly Hallows Hacker rumor

The Nimble Books Blog » Blog Archive » not a very credible Deathly Hallows Rumor

Harry Potter transcript claim doesn’t convince | The Register

The posted message claims to expose the names and ways in which two of the characters die, something that has been the subject of much speculation by fans of author J.K.Rowling and the boy wizard. For those not allergic to potential spoilers (of dubious provenance) the post can be found here.

One technical point I haven’t seen made is that most publishers work with manuscripts in separate chapter files for 99% of the production process. The full manuscript would be quite a lengthy file. I would be quite surprised for an electronic copy of the full manuscript to be sitting around in Bloomsbury. Surely chapter files would be much more widely dispersed within the organization. That fact that the hacker didn’t refer to finding and copying 30 or so separate PDF files casts doubt in my mind on whether they were really inside the Bloomsbury network as he claims.

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Performancing’s Deathly Hallows experiment

book arbitrage | Performancing.com

Every month, Performancing is going to run an experiment that we hope will accomplish three things. First, and foremost, it should be fun! Second, we’ll all learn a new thing or two about marketing strategy. Third, by running a collective experiment, we can share seo and marketing wisdom with each other.

This month, the experiment is going to be Book Arbitrage. Let’s have fun with it!

The book we are going to try to do search arbitrage on is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Basically, this is the art of creating a useful website about a popular book (almost like a squidoo lens) and gaining Amazon affiliate sales.

If you read Performancing closely, you might have seen my suggestion that the Photopress theme is the perfect tool for book arbitrage because it lets you put up a nice and big picture of the book’s cover art….plus it’s clean and professional looking.

To get started, I’ve gone ahead and setup a bare-bones book arbitrage site for the 7th and final Harry Potter book that releases on July 21, 2007. As a community, we have about one month to put our plan into place and execute it. Profits will be split evenly between Performancing and everyone who either offers a suggestion in this comment thread or links to the Deathly Hallows site.

What I want us to do collectively is make suggestions for how to make this a killer landing page for HP 7. So fire away in the comment section. What should we add to this barebones template to make it kick some Google ass?

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not a very credible Deathly Hallows Rumor

Harry Potter transcript claim doesn’t convince | The Register

The posted message claims to expose the names and ways in which two of the characters die, something that has been the subject of much speculation by fans of author J.K.Rowling and the boy wizard. For those not allergic to potential spoilers (of dubious provenance) the post can be found here.

Not very credible. Remember that with HBP, a “dumbledore is dead” rumor came out about a month before publication — but that was based on people who had actually seen printed copies of the book.

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Unauthorized Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows News: Half-Blood Prince Analysis by W. F. Zimmerman



HP7 book length

From The Leaky Cauldron:

In a major announcement today about their intent to print Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book on recycled paper, Scholastic, the US publishers of the Harry Potter novels said that the last Harry Potter book will have “784″ pages.

This will make the book the second longest of the series, behind Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix which has 870 pages. It also edges out “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” which has 734 pages.

Hermione Agonistes

Popwatch | Blog | Movies | Music | TV: Entertainment Weekly

Holy Hogwarts! Is it true that Emma Watson, 16-year-old child star of the Harry Potter films, will not be coming back for the final two installments of the multi-billion-dollar-grossing movie franchise? That’s what more than one British tabloid reported over this past weekend. But, as with stories filed by the hideous journalist character Rita Skeeter in the Potter books, the so-called “news” about Watson turns out to be untrue.

Tip of the hat to Entertainment Weekly for the great title!

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Pre-order Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Pub date: July 21, 2007.  Yay!

Pre-order here.

Postal Service begins planning for HP7

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Postal plan begins on Potter book

The release date for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows remains unconfirmed but the postal service is to meet online retailers next month. Demand is expected to be as high as last year when 500,000 pre-ordered copies of the sixth book were delivered in the UK. A Royal Mail spokesman said: “This kind of operation takes a lot of planning.” A Harry Potter book release is one of the busiest times of the year for postal workers, next to Christmas.

This is exciting — maybe we’ll see a release in 2007 after all!

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placeholder cover for HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS